This course first presents an overview of what PHP is, how PHP programs run, and why PHP is so popular. You will also see a comparison of PHP to JavaScript, CGI, Net.Data and Java Web applications. Next, you will see how the PHP language is supported on the System IBM i5/OS platform with the Zend Corporation product suite.
Great software. I use it all the time for my friends that speak other lang using JavaScript, CGI, Net to make thier page.
Great OS, and for it being based on 35 year old concepts, it is STILL ahead of its time. My favorites are hardware execute protection (which just recently made it to x86), integrated database (which Microsoft was going to do with Vista, but dropped), and single level store (Plan 9 has a cousin of this in its virtualized everything architecture).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/400
If like me you wondered WTF is i5, this is nice. The OPM to ILE transition of 1995 seemingly may have (eventually !) inspired the dot-net-CLR philosophy, but I never heard of it till now !
um, the “dot-net-CLR” philosophy IS Java. Or at least Java… only on Windows exclusively.
Edited 2006-11-12 21:43
Googling << COBOL .NET >> reveals that Fujitsu sees a buck in generating Microsoft MSIL for the COBOL language, the i5 ILE “of course” included COBOL as one of the languages.
To concede I am a C++ dude, I have never written a line of Java. But the Wikipedia summary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_bytecode
as well as Googling << COBOL JAVA BYTECODE >> “seems” to confirm that Java BYTECODE was not ORIGINALLY INTENDED to be a general purpose intermediate language targeted by pretty much all OTHER languages. Am I wrong, WAS it a cornerstone of Java architecture that the bytecode support COBOL etc ?
The history section offered by Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28Sun%29
does not seem to include that grand vision of one-runtime-to-support-them-all. Of course Java started in 1990 vs 1995 for OPM-to-ILE, so it is more correct to say that Java Bytecode might have been an INSPIRATION to both ILE and CLR.
Edited 2006-11-12 22:06
The MSIL article from Wikipedia pointed me at the end, to PHP for .NET, had not heard of Phalanger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanger_%28compiler%29
Edited 2006-11-12 22:21
This is news because this is a Zend Created and IBM approved install of PHP for system i5. Previously, you could get PHP on an i5/iSeries/AS400, but it was a bit of a hack… you had to use the unix compatibility mode. IBM and Zend reps were at Common in September rolling this out. And it’s REALLY easy to set up. Hopefully, This will open up all those hip, cool PHP apps on the web we all love to run at companies that are still on “old, stoogy” i5 boxes… There’s still the issue with most OSS PHP software written to MySql and not generic OBDC, but that can be overcome as well.
The mentioned net.data has nothing to do with Microsoft, it’s a old IBM attempt to pretty up RPG and Cobol from a long time ago.
This is an ZEND advertisement packed into the education article posted in the news site.